Aperture 3 Importing Folders as Projects is taking days to complete

Question

Hello,
I acquired Aperture 3 a week ago and decided to give it a try. I've been using Lightroom since version 1. All my photos are in NEF (Nikon RAW) format and stored on an External HD. I used the A3 option FILE > IMPORT > FOLDERS AS PROJECTS command and selected folders from year 2008, 2009, 2010...this are 109 folders (13401 photos) from a total of 348 from year 2003 to date, meaning I am importing a fraction of all photos.
A very important note: I use the import option "Store Files: In their current location"...so that A3 is not moving, copying and so on, any files - it's just referencing them.
The problem starts here - it took Aperture 3 almost 24 hours to complete the "import"...i.e. to fill all the Projects with the corresponding photos. But the IMPORT PROCESS continues forever, today is day 4...the Aperture Library on this has grown to 18 GB and still growing. There is small but constant Hard Disk activity between the External HD with the Photos and the internal HD with the Library.
If I try to quit Aperture I get a message box:
+"Do you want to continue importing? Aperture is currently importing files. If you quit, the import task will be canceled and any files that have not been fully imported will be removed. | Quit | Continue |"+
How much longer shall I wait? Is it really importing or is this a bug? Why is there no progress bar or counter to give an estimate or idea of what is going on?
Just as reference: I imported the same folders (109) into Lightroom 3 Beta with the option "Store Files: In their current location" and it took only 1-2 hours.
Any help is highly appreciated.
Regards,
Kostadin

Answer 1

Kostadin,
I'm noticing same thing today. This morning I imported about 100 Canon 7D RAW images from my memory card, which took about 5 minutes upon which I got the "Delete Images and Eject Card?" dialog. I accepted and removed the card.
4 hours later, I still have a "Importing..." spinning ball on Aperture. For the first couple of hours, I was trying to send emails with a few images and it would take 20 minutes for Aperture to generate the JPEG in the email. Now it only takes 10-15 seconds. BUt it is still "importing". So aperture continues to function, but it has some process going which keeps my CPU fans running on the MacBook Pro.
I am anxious to see just how long it takes to IMPORT... after it finishes importing.
What's it doing for this long?
Jim